This is a very well received (and prize winning) novel from 2005, given to me as a gift. I have just got round to reading it. It is described by some reviews as comedy, however I found it desperately sad, with none of the characters (bar a few incidental ones) having any redeeming features. Basically an impoverished widowed elderly Ukrainian immigrant to the UK, Nikolai, gets conned into a sham marriage to allow a much younger divorced Ukrainian, Valentina, and her son to settle in the UK. He however believes it is love, and is transfixed by the size of her breasts (which he has also paid to enlarge). She is obviously convinced he is rich and can secure her a better life in the West, but is having affairs with other English men on the side and sees Nikolai as purely a cash machine. His daughters, Nadezhda and Vera, estranged from each other over a row about their mother's will, put aside their differences, and fight to secure Valentina's deportation and divorce from their father. The novel goes through the ups and downs of the sisters relationship, Nikolai and his late wife's backstory, the scheming of Valentina to stay in the UK, and various run ins with the medical, immigration, legal and social services of Peterborough. In the background Nikolai is writing his magnum opus about the engineering of tractor design, hence the title. Nobody comes out of it very well. Nikolai did some dreadful things involving his family before moving to the UK, his daughters seem obsessed with the potential loss of their small inheritance (although neither need the money), and Valentina exploits them all mercilessly. Only Mike, the level headed husband of Nadezhda seems to have any common sense, and even he gets sucked in with trying to repair a old Rolls Royce car bought to improve Valentina's status in Peterborough. In the end, divorce happens, Valentina goes back to the Ukraine with her former ex-husband, and Nikolai moves into sheltered accommodation. Whilst it has funny scenes and lines, and I suppose it was readable, I didn't really enjoy it.